75 Significant Books, Part Five

As the largest and most diversified press between Chicago and California, the University of Nebraska Press is best known for publishing works in Native studies, history, sports, anthropology, geography, American studies, and creative works.

In celebration of the press’s seventy-fifth anniversary, the staff has selected seventy-five of the four thousand books UNP has published since 1941 to represent what is most distinctive and significant about our list. We have included books we originally published under the Nebraska imprint, the Bison Books imprint, the Potomac Books imprint, and the Jewish Publication Society collaborative agreement. When we have selected a book series we have listed the year the first book in the series was published.

Here are the next eight significant books, click here for the previous seven titles.

The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk’s Teachings Given to John G. Neihardt (1984) edited by Raymond J. DeMallie. Raymond J. DeMallie makes available for the first time the transcripts from Neihardt’s interviews with Black Elk in 1931 and 1944, which formed the basis for the two books. His introduction offers new insights into the life of Black Elk.

Guerrilla Warfare (1985) by Ernest “Che” Guevara. This indispensable book includes three of Che Guevara’s most influential essays describing his tactical philosophy of fighting a guerrilla war in Latin America. All three essays reflect his deeply held belief that a small, rural-based guerrilla army could trigger a revolution.

Old Indian Legends (1985) by Zitkala-Ša. Early in the century a magnificent Sioux woman named Zitkala-Ša published these legends that she learned during her childhood on the Yankton Reservation. Until her death in 1938, Zitkala-Ša stood between two cultures as preserver and translator.

Solomon D. Butcher: Photographing the American Dream (1985) by John E. Carter. For millions of Americans, Solomon D. Butcher’s photographs epitomize the sod-house frontier. His late-nineteenth-century images from western Nebraska constitute the most extensive photographic record in existence of the generation that settled the Great Plains.

Glas (1986) by Jacques Derrida, translated by John P. Leavey Jr. and Richard Rand. Glas extensively reworks the problems of reading and writing in philosophy and literature; questions the possibility of linear reading and its consequent notions of theme, author, narrative, and discursive demonstration; and ingeniously disrupts the positions of reader and writer in the text.

Those of the Gray Wind: The Sandhill Cranes (1986) by Paul A. Johnsgard. With Paul Johnsgard, we follow the annual migration of the sandhill cranes from the American Southwest to their Alaskan mating grounds and then home again. It is a flight unaltered in nearly ten million years. By presenting various cycles of the migration in four time periods from 1860 to 1980, Johnsgard, a prominent naturalist, is able to show how man’s encroachments have imperiled the flocks.

The Writing of the Disaster (1986) by Maurice Blanchot, translated by Ann Smock. The Writing of the Disaster reflects upon efforts to abide in disaster’s infinite threat. First published in French in 1980, it takes up the most serious tasks of writing: to describe, explain, and redeem when possible, and to admit what is not possible. Neither offers consolation.